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Just when you thought it was safe to dip your toe into the blue again

It’s interesting to seen how David Cameron has truly changed his party. Nolonger the heartless uncaring breed of Tories that drove our public services to the brink of collapse throughout the 80′s and 90′s. He’s reassured the British people that it’s safe to vote Tory again. That they care about our communities, our elderly, our young and about worker’s welfare and conditions. Gone are the days when people would have to fear for their job or suffer changing working conditions that make them worse off. It’s great to see that Dave has instilled this caring ethic into his party and as someone who happens to live in a local authority (Walsall) controlled by his party that I have to accept as a cynical old leftie that I was wrong about the Tories. They really have changed and one has to look no further than Walsall Council’s budget for this and the forthcoming years to appreciate the focus and dedication that Tories at the local level have towards delivering top notch public services to us residents of all ages and circumstances.

In fact, I thought I’d share a few of the highlights with you, of course with a bit of commentary and interpretation of my own. Enjoy.

Increase of 10% on all leisure facilities activities:

Yep, that’s 10%, no not in line with inflation. After all, in a Borough that has one of the worst obesity rates in the country, forget about encouraging people to exercise or take part in sports activities, nah lets just try and screw some extra money out of them. After all if people stop going to the leisure centres, we can always claim they’re under-used and shut them in the future saving even more money. Everyone’s a winner eh?

7 thoughts on “Just when you thought it was safe to dip your toe into the blue again”

A very good analysis – you missed a few others that impact on Walsall. However, I sat in the public gallery at the budget meeting. So did a ‘disgruntled man’ according to the Express and Star. He asked the labour group for their alternatives and there was silence. An oen goal attacked like a Stewart Pearce penalty in 1990. (Well, not really because at least Pearce kicked the ball, Walsall Labour group were not even on the pitch apart from one member who asked if money could be saved by not photocopying the ‘state of Walsall’ address.

The Lib Dems spoke but as is normal had no awareness of where the target is.

There is no political choice in Walsall at present. Is it any wonder that voting rates are declining?

Hi Tyger, deleted one of your comments, presumed you accidentally posted twice. I have no idea if you’d need a clean driving license to be a part-time golf attendant but you’ve got to admit it’s not a bad salary for, well, whatever golf attendants do.

To Tiddler, welcome to th blog, apologies for a delay in response, my computer has been erstwhile engaged doing rather complicated number crunching for the last couple of days and therefore unavailable. You make a good point about effective opposition. Sadly I wasn’t at the meeting so I’ll take your word on the muted response from the Labour benches.

I think the problem is that the it is of course a foregone conclusion in such situations that the budget would have been passed so on that basis there is nothing that Labour could have done to affect the outcome of the budget. The group could have spent weeks putting together an alternative budget proposal as has happened in the past but one has to cynical and think what is the point in spending large amounts of time putting forward an alternative when it is quite simply a waste of time. Of course given the scale of cuts that are going to have a severe detrimental effect on public services in Walsall, it wouldn’t have been beyond an opposition member just to run through them, comment a little in the hope it gets picked up in the press and the general public can see exactly what is going on in the way the Tories are running Walsall. That is of course assuming certain elements of the press would have a desire to report it anyway.

Just in case anyone missed the point I was that “disgruntled man” and I had been blogging about all these cuts well before they happened and organised action to oppose them – unfortunately the Labour Group did what is good at and did NOTHING!